Dave opening for KI$$...

[silverfish]

Reviewer is clueless.

You think that one was bad - here's an even more pitiful "review" of the Buffalo show:

Finally, a night with the Kiss Army in Buffalo

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/news/night_and_day/jennings-finally-a-night-with-the-kiss-army-in-buffalo/article_c1153327-105c-5109-a517-455832b88eb3.html

Less than half of the piece is about the show itself. Actually, the only performance related
items are "fire spitting, a drum solo and exploding guitars".

And not a single mention of the opening act.

[Nitro Express]

Who could forget? The crowd was livid. That's when the BUULLSHIT! chants began.

Yup. It definitely triggered the crowd.

[Nitro Express]

The estimated crowd at Cal Jam II is 350,000. The day VH played during US83 the crowd was estimated to be 300,00 but there were people as far away as you could see without binoculars at Cal Jam II. Ontario Motor Speedway was a superspeedway. 2 1/2 miles around. Much bigger than the part of Glen Hellen where the US festivals took place. Look at the aerial photos. There were a lot more people at Cal Jam II.
Here's Cal Jam II

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Here's US 83

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Yeah that's the point I was making. Everyone makes a big deal of the 83 US Festival but the Cal Jams were huge as well. They did a lot of large multi-billed shows in California. Festivals were not my favorite to be honest. I enjoyed seeing one band in a smaller venue. But hey. We were there. Ha!

[Nitro Express]

It was Angel Dust for a while back in the mid 80s. I took a guy there to get some smoke in early 85. He handed me a really skinny joint claiming it was just weed but it smelled like a pickle. It was Angel Dust on mint leaves. I made the mother fucker walk back home to Riverside for trying to get me to smoke that shit.

Ha! Yeah. I just remember going down I-15 from the desert going down the pass into San Bernardino and in the 70's the smog was just a thick soup. The smog was really bad then. But that area was kind of seedy as long as I can remember.

[Nitro Express]

Other side of the coin being that organizing and pulling a festival like that off...just the sheer size of it and the amount of components...can't really sit here and say any of it would be an easy task by any means.

You look at the films of the original Woodstock and Altamont, you can't help but laugh when you see footage of the organizers trying to deal with all the issues coming up, because it's so clear that the size and scope of the events escalated beyond anything they could control and they end up just winging it and holding on for the ride...half-useless/half-stoned Trippy Dippy Hippie dudes that they were.

They were worried about mass electrocution at Woodstock. The rain had turned the ground to mud and the buried power cables were in danger of being exposed. Then if you stopped the music, you might cause a riot. One Woodstock organizer said he had just heard about the possible electrocution danger after he just got off the phone with Governor Rockefeller begging him not to send in the National Guard. The governor said ok, but if anything happens I'm holding you personally responsible!

[Terry]

They were worried about mass electrocution at Woodstock. The rain had turned the ground to mud and the buried power cables were in danger of being exposed. Then if you stopped the music, you might cause a riot. One Woodstock organizer said he had just heard about the possible electrocution danger after he just got off the phone with Governor Rockefeller begging him not to send in the National Guard. The governor said ok, but if anything happens I'm holding you personally responsible!

Yeah, but then some of those same original Woodstock organizers turned up to 'organize' Altamont a few months later, and that event was plagued with problems, too.

Not that organizing rock festivals is a walk in the park...but, well...I liked a lot of the music that came out of the late 1960s, but never cared for the hippies who were listening to it.

Although at least the actual hippies of the actual late-1960's were FAR more tolerable than the suburban 'hippies' who were seemingly birthed en masse after Grateful Dead's 'Touch Of Grey' single was released in the mid-1980's: those hippies come lately truly WERE a useless bunch.

[Terry]

You think that one was bad - here's an even more pitiful "review" of the Buffalo show:

Finally, a night with the Kiss Army in Buffalo

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/news/night_and_day/jennings-finally-a-night-with-the-kiss-army-in-buffalo/article_c1153327-105c-5109-a517-455832b88eb3.html

Less than half of the piece is about the show itself. Actually, the only performance related
items are "fire spitting, a drum solo and exploding guitars".

And not a single mention of the opening act.

3/4's of the review was an abbreviated autobiography of the reviewer's relationship to the band as a casual fan. Which I found to be of some interest, since the reviewer is about my age.

After that, though, one expects a somewhat detailed review of the show, which is dismissed in far fewer paragraphs than the autobiography.

[cadaverdog]

Although at least the actual hippies of the actual late-1960's were FAR more tolerable than the suburban 'hippies' who were seemingly birthed en masse after Grateful Dead's 'Touch Of Grey' single was released in the mid-1980's: those hippies come lately truly WERE a useless bunch.

I was an early version of a hippy come lately. A mid 70s hippy. A time of transition that left the hippies behind as the yuppies took over. I missed that boat. I know about Greyheads but they were just regular folks that got into the Dead a bit late. Not true Deadheads. But the people you speak of are foreign to me. In the mid 80s most of my friends became meth heads. I wasn't into it. I don't think I knew any of the hippy come lately people from that era. What were they into, not into?

[FORD]

Touch of Grey was alright, but it wasn't even close to the Dead's best song...

[Terry]

Touch of Grey was alright, but it wasn't even close to the Dead's best song...

The vast majority of their stuff I still enjoy the most tends to be found on either American Beauty or Workingman's Dead, specifically the studio versions of those songs vs. the elongated live versions that went on forever. Possibly in part because my uncles passed down their copies of those albums to me at the very beginning of the 1980s, and I listened to them at an age where I was too young to really know/understand the cultural history of the band and too young to care about listening to things I liked in terms of the music being hip or in fashion or whatever: I liked those albums because I liked the songs on them. No more, no less.

When everyone else in my age group went bananas over The Dead for the first time after the In The Dark album/Touch Of Grey single, said people would end up blathering about how American Beauty and Workingman's Dead were just gateway albums for casual Dead fans, and you weren't REALLY a Dead fan unless you "like, listened to this specific live 20-minute version of Franklin's Tower...plus, you have to, like, know the exact date the band last played Dark Star in concert...otherwise, you can never be a Super Duper Fan Of Jerry!!" It was that lame, late-in-the-day/late 1980's Garcia Cult comprised of my suburban teenage peers that sprung up in the wake of Touch Of Grey (which, for me, was never much more than a slightly charming, mildly poignant tune, certainly not among the best the Dead had to offer) that put me off the Dead fans...like, they would say people who liked the AB and WD albums were casual fans without the slightest trace of self-awareness that their own introduction to the group was a tame late 1980s album and single: shit, at least my intro to the band was a pair of albums that contained much of their best work.

[Nickdfresh]

I'm not sure of what Noel Monk's dog is in the fight, but he spent a few passages basically calling the Woodstock guys a bunch of cunts that ripped off bands with their "movie"...

[Terry]

Plus, everyone knows the most important performance at Woodstock was that of Sha-Na-Na, anyway...

[Jérôme Frenchise]

I once read about the Dead being the most stoned band that has ever been.

But then we're deviating from the topic.

[Terry]

I once read about the Dead being the most stoned band that has ever been.

But then we're deviating from the topic.

Yes, I was getting a bit far afield from Dave opening for KISS with that Dead tangent.

From my understanding, some claim Roth is slated to keep opening for KISS through October, although officially he has signed on for what amounts to only the first leg of the tour, which ends in May...

...honestly, I get the feeling (and it really isn't a display of any sort of wonderous fortunetelling ability) after this KISS stint concludes that Dave's prospects far as a live performer under his own flag are gonna revert back to what he was doing circa 2005/2006: smaller venues, non-headlining slots on a hard rock bill at State Fairs/County Expos type thing (which a lot of these older hard rock acts are grateful for in the States, mostly because those type gigs pay - and pretty well in comparison to club dates - in cash on the day of the show: you string enough of those together, you can make a good chunk of change).

And I'd still, even at this late date, have a degree of interest in seeing Dave at a smaller venue with a well-rehearsed band behind him, but not so much if his setlist is gonna be 80% CVH tunes. Only because that's what he had been doing with Van Halen since 2007, and seeing Dave doing that material without the Van Halens onstage with him nowadays...

But I get that whatever drawing power he has retained is linked to people just wanting to see him perform that CVH material. What I enjoyed about that first Vegas show was hearing the band bust out a long-neglected solo chestnut like Big Train, as opposed to JLP (a tune I never particularly liked even when Skyscraper came out - why not replace that with Damn Good? If nothing else, the vocals on that tune are much more within Roth's abilities now than JLP is, AND it's a better tune, to boot!), but the sort of setlist I'd like to hear Roth do in a club nowadays...it just isn't compatible with what people (or with what I'm guessing the majority of people) want to hear from him now live, which is Van Halen's better-known tunes.

You know what I'd like to hear from Dave in a club setting these days? A setlist along the lines of or including (but not necessarily in this order):

Blacksand
Goin' Places
A Little Ain't Enough (there's a recognizable tune for the casual audience member...really, Dave's last solo single that had a significant degree of commercial success)
Tell The Truth
She's My Machine
Big Train
Ladies' Nite In Buffalo?
Goin' Crazy! (another recognizable solo tune for the casual audience member)
Tobacco Road
Damn Good


Now, there are ten songs - pretty much half a setlist - of solid Roth solo tunes. All of which - unlike, say, Yankee Rose or JLP - Dave can simply sing (as opposed to shout) and the tunes should sound good.

The other half of the setlist can be chock full of the best-known CVH stuff (Unchained, Jump, Panama, etc.)

THAT would be a DLR solo show I'd enjoy seeing.

[FORD]

Blacksand & Goin' Places would be great to hear. It's pretty much insane that most of the "DLR Band" album has never been played live at all, considering what a great record it was. I think "Slam Dunk" was the only song that ever made the set list, and that was only in 1999.